Posted on 11/07/2010 7:43:38 AM PST by Saije
Cyn Bird grabbed a torn piece of notebook paper to scribble the secrets spilling from her mother's mouth as she neared death: The mysterious Miami doctor named Katherine Cole who delivered and supposedly sold babies to couples. The phone call on Jan. 12, 1962, that a baby girl with sky blue eyes was available. The $2,500 price tag.
After 46 years, Bird had learned the stunning truth about her birth from her mother. Bird was adopted. Illegally. ``How do you wake up at my age and realize you have no idea who you really are?'' asks Bird, a New Jersey wife, mother and artist who discovered her adoption in March 2008, four months before her mother's death. ``I am still trying to wrap my head around this.''
She turned to the Internet and found others like her. The people of this new community even had a name for themselves: Cole babies.
In what authorities call one of the most haunting, widespread cases of illegal adoptions in Florida history, Cole reportedly placed more than 1,000 babies, most without legal documentation, out of her two-story Southwest Eighth Street clinic from the 1930s to the 1960s. She died in 1981, leaving no records and without ever admitting the full scale of the shadowy operation that created three generations of Cole babies struggling to piece together their identities. For most, the discovery was triggered by a revelation and a birth certificate on which Cole listed the adoptive parents as the birth parents.
``She absolutely played God,'' said Josette Marquess, a retired Florida adoption official who shepherded dozens of Cole babies through mostly fruitless state searches for family. ``We have no official record of their adoptions -- like they never happened -- which makes it nearly impossible to help these folks find their birth parents.''
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
From what I understand, those of us that did Wagons West, picked up the strays and raised them as our own life was hard.
Otsego New York perhaps?
Ah, yes.... but when has that ever stopped FReepers from offering their commandments from on high?
Your post made me smile. Good for you, mom.
The Oneida took another 160 years to win a lawsuit to allow them to reacquire their property.
A VAST number of white folks got wagons and went West all over the place as a consequence. A little bit later they had what were called the Tenant Strikes (riots) near Livingston NY ~ this involved tenant farmers refusing to pay rent and demanding the right to buy land from the old Dutch estates. The owners refused to deal. The people there hitched up wagons and took off.
The folks running New York brought in illegal aliens who were more amenable to oppression.
Hasn't been the same since. Horrid place.
That would be....never.
Are they really? How many times have we seen an adopted child taken away from the only parents they know, who cared for them and loved them as their own and returned to a "birth parent" who obtained a good lawyer or father who crawled out of the woodwork?
The system isn't perfect but in my opinion the only solution is the complete destruction of all documention relevant to the child's parents as well as that of the persons who chose to give the child a loving home.
My point, and question, was did it cause a major change in their lives, or did they just view it rather casually and go on.
Seems like, from your description, it was the latter.
Another suggestion is that the documentation be sealed, and only given to the child when he/she turns legal age.
Well, they are 9 and 7 now, and they have lots of adopted friends. How it plays when they get older remains to be seen.
But they are very well adjusted now, we make a big deal out of chinese events, etc (and yes, they LOVE rice), we’ve told them what we do know about their birth information while leaving out the harsher facts for now. We can’t lie because it’s in their official documentation from China but we’ll cross that bridge when they are older.
They know they were wanted, they know we asked God for them and prayed for them even before we knew them, and they know they are loved. I think they’ll be fine.
You make a valid point but then that compromises the complete anonymity of the parent/parents who gave the child up for adoption..........
If I gave a child away at birth for adoption, I'm not so certain that I would want to face him/her forty years later.
At least they weren’t sucked down a drain.
When they give the child up, they should specify whether they want the info preserved for the child (upon legal age) or not.
I am not adopted, so my opinion is really irrelevant, but I said it anyway.
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I’m not adopted either but I sure used to fantasize that I was switched at birth.
I have a friend who is adopted and is mildly interested in finding her birth parents but she can’t because it would take an attorney to unseal the CA records and she is just busy raising her own kids now. Her parents are great BTW.
Last month I was on Ancestory.com and saw a msg naming my deceased brother as the biological father of a young man. I emailed him and sure enough, it’s true. He’s a nice young man and we are all glad to make the connection.
Three years ago I learned that my Uncle had an affair with his wifes SIL and had a son, who she and her husband raised. Then my Uncle and SIL kept at it and had yet another son but this one was put up for adoption. I submitted some DNA from a male family member to see if there’s a match from an adoptee if he’s out there looking but nothing yet.
I’ve got tons of these stories, as do most people, if they dig deep enough into family. Or maybe it’s just me. Hmmm,
if it’s just me, then maybe I was switched at birth.
From your description, I have no doubt they will have the best of opportunity in life.
You admit that you didn’t just lay out the entire truth to them at five years old, but are controlling it and giving them what they need, or what they can handle.
Going back to the article and my original statement that provoked some responses, compared to the benefits of being adopted into loving families that just couldn’t make the government cut, how important is the loss of their bio-parent info?
The whole point of gathering this ‘group’ is to use their group mindset to try and ‘fix’ something that happened a long time ago and cannot be fixed. Those who offer the ‘fix’ do so only to make some money.
I see that as a waste, and an added emotional burden for these ‘Cole babies’.
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